Ava Max
Amanda Ava Koci was born in Milwaukee to Albanian immigrant parents and raised in Virginia, spending years cycling through stage names and false starts before breaking through in 2018 as Ava Max with 'Sweet but Psycho,' a dark, hook-driven electropop single that reached number one across more than twenty countries. Her debut album 'Heaven & Hell' (2020) set out her signature of belted, empowerment-minded dance-pop built on glossy synth production, big diva vocals, and choruses engineered for maximum singability. She became one of the streaming era's most reliable pop hitmakers, extending a lineage of theatrical, vocally forward pop divas into the late 2010s and 2020s.
Max has named Lady Gaga among her influences, and her breakthrough arrived in the mold Gaga cut for dark, theatrical electropop fronted by a heightened, villainess-styled persona — a comparison critics drew repeatedly around 'Sweet but Psycho.'
listen forThrow on Gaga's 'Bad Romance,' with its stomping minor-key synth build and campy, unhinged vamp, right before 'Sweet but Psycho' — both wrap a dark, larger-than-life female character around a relentless dancefloor pulse and a chant-along hook.
Max has cited Madonna as an influence, and her music leans on the template Madonna established of the empowerment-driven dance-pop anthem fronted by a self-reinventing pop persona.
listen forPlay Madonna's 'Express Yourself' against 'Kings & Queens' — both are chest-out, you-deserve-better empowerment anthems that ride a big four-on-the-floor beat up into a rallying, fist-in-the-air chorus.
Max has named Christina Aguilera among her influences, and her vocal approach — powerhouse belting deployed in service of self-acceptance anthems — echoes Aguilera's early-2000s run.
listen forSet Aguilera's 'Beautiful' beside 'So Am I' — both are you-are-not-alone outsider anthems that swell from a held-back verse into a big, belted chorus built to reassure the bullied and the different.